A faded wrist tattoo reminds me of this every day.
To live and then to die. We burst forth into this world ready to learn, achieve, change and leave it in resignation to an unknown. Birth is the beginning, death the end. Birth sets it all in motion and at death it comes to a grinding halt.
So linguistically, why is “to be born” a passive verb and “to die” an active verb?
It’s as if we have no choice in the first matter and every choice in the second. Do we somehow bring about our own death in an act of existential revolt against a life we were thrown into without a choice? That is certainly one way to explain the disjunction between the beginning and end on the one hand and the verbs that denote them on the other.
One may conclude: Life is the journey from passiveness to action.